BJP lawmaker proposes renaming Deoband

NEW DELHI: The newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Brijesh Singh has proposed renaming the Deoband city in India’s Muslim majority Saharanpur district, Indian media reported.

The city is famous for housing the Darul Uloom Islamic school from where the Deobandi sect of Islam began.

“The city was known as Devbrad during the Mahabharata era and the Pandava brothers spent their one year in incognito exile here,” Singh told Economic Times, adding that that the city’s name was changed after the Deoband religious school was setup.

He maintained that he will press this “issue” in assembly as the town should not be known only by the school when its history related to the Mahabharata (one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India).